Braid

Characters: Shachi. Rating: K. Warnings: Implied past character death

Shachi only had one problem with someone braiding his hair while he was asleep. There were some inconveniences, like how the braids were never quite right, pinching in places and too loose in others, but there was only one problem. Not that he dared admit it out loud.

It was the fact that it was done while he was asleep.

It wasn't something he advertised, but Shachi had a weakness for people playing with his hair. The hints were there, like the way he insisted that someone else (Law) cut his hair for him, rather than doing it himself like the other two, and the way he kept it around shoulder-length, rather than a more practical style, like Law and Penguin did.

Penguin knew. Shachi didn't recall if he'd ever been told, or if he'd just picked it up over the years, but it was hard to miss the way he'd go straight for Shachi's hair when the ginger was feeling down. He never braided it though, had never bothered to learn how and that was fine because Shachi didn't expect Penguin to do more than ruffle his hair at any given moment anyway.

In the end, that was the way Shachi figured out that what he'd coined "braid attacks" had to be Law's fault. While it was right in line with a prank Penguin could be expected to pull, if Penguin could do a braid he would have done it years ago. Bepo's paws had no way of controlling hair to that degree, which meant their tiny, grumpy, brat of a captain liked to braid hair.

It was because he was a grumpy brat of a captain that Shachi didn't tell him he didn't have to wait for him to be asleep. He didn't know how he'd react to being caught, and he certainly didn't want to see the reaction when he learned that he enjoyed the sensation of having his hair carefully twisted up into a braid. Penguin was one thing, but the volatile and unpredictable brat of a captain was something else entirely.

His enjoyment didn't come from nowhere. His mother had had long hair, and the practical way to control it was a simple braid – on the rare occasions she felt it needed controlling, rather than allowing it to spill freely down her back like a lava flow anyway – so Shachi had hours of memories of watching her braid it before she baked, or went out on the boats. His mother had also been very pretty, even to a seven year old boy (although whether that was just a son's adoration for his mother or a generally accepted fact in the community he was never quite sure), and he'd loved her hair, delighted that he'd inherited it rather than his father's choppy brown.

Growing it out had been the natural thing for him, a homage to his mother's similar hair, although she'd smiled and asked him to keep it short enough to play without getting tangled in the branches. He'd pouted – a conversation Shachi remembered well, despite only being four at the time – and said he wanted pretty braids like Mama, only for her to laugh and prove that shoulder-length was practical but also easy to tie up if he wanted to. Low-maintenance, she'd called it, not that he'd understood what the words meant exactly at the time.

He was glad of that now, living on a submarine where long hair would have been a bit of a problem (not that Ikkaku seemed to care, after she joined). Having found the balance between long, practical and low-maintenance as a child, he didn't need to change anything to survive life on the Polar Tang.

His hair hadn't been braided since his mother died, not really. Noona would cut it for him, keeping it the length he and his mother had agreed on and sometimes twisting it around her fingers in a mimicry, but he'd been too withdrawn in the immediate aftermath to ask her, and with everyone in turmoil (Noona, in particular, seemed uncertain how to handle them now it was a full-time responsibility and not just once a week) he and Penguin had quickly matured until asking for things like that seemed like just a child's thing to do. Shachi no longer felt like a child.

Waking up to find someone had braided his hair for the first time in seven years had been a shock, but more than indignation (even if that was the face he showed to his companions) it had prompted nostalgia, almost a reminder that he was still a child even if he hadn't been a child since he was seven.

If he started sleeping in the recreation room with his hat off more often, well, that was his own business.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari